The Old Testament for Everyone
John Goldingay
Preface
The idea of an ‘Old Testament for Everyone’ in English goes back at least to William Tyndale, the first great figure of the English Reformation, who was executed in 1536. A few decades after the printing press came into use in Europe, Tyndale made it his ambition to produce a translation of the Bible into English that could be printed and made available to the ‘boy that driveth the plough’ (so John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, published a few decades after Tyndale’s death). In other words, it could be made available to ‘everyone’. Tyndale completed the New Testament and started on the Old, which Miles Coverdale later completed. The ‘Old Testament for Everyone’ is thus a long-running project.
The present translation brings together the translation sections from the series of little commentaries called the Old Testament for Everyone, and fills in the gaps in those volumes. I have substantially revised the translation in those commentaries, partly because I hadn’t worried about consistency of style and approach between them as I produced them, whereas it seemed necessary to aim at consistency in this complete translation.
There are many ways of going about translation, and sometimes people try to argue that such-and-such an approach is right and others wrong. I don’t think that one approach is necessarily better than all others, and there’s no such thing as the best translation of the Old Testament. All translations are more or less accurate, but producing a faithful equivalent of any piece of writing in another language is an impossible undertaking; all approaches involve compromise. Translations thus have varying strengths and weaknesses according to the way they choose to prioritize the principles of translation.
I had three or four principles in mind when I began this work, and I formulated three or four more in the course of completing it. There is some tension between these principles, and where my translation is jerky, the jerkiness probably reflects one or other of them. I have finally aimed to produce a translation that as far as possible has the following characteristics.
· It sticks close to the way the Hebrew (and Aramaic) works rather than paraphrasing it, so that readers can get as close as possible to the details of the original text. Sometimes when I’ve added words to make the meaning clearer, I’ve put these words in square brackets. Nowadays translations are more inclined to aim at translating sentence-by-sentence, which has opposite advantages and disadvantages to translating word-by-word. My translation moves in that older direction, in rendering more word-by-word. It’s consequently more suitable for a slow read than for a quick read, and more suitable for reading on one’s own than for reading out loud. And where a sentence may make sense but you’re not sure what it refers to or how it fits into the context, it’s probably because the text itself doesn’t make it clear, and I’ve left it that way. As a further consequence, although I myself prefer to use gender-inclusive language, I’ve let the translation stay gendered where inclusivizing it obscures whether the text is using singular or plural – in other words, the translation often uses ‘he’ when the the text refers to a man or a woman and where in my own writing I would thus say ‘they’ or ‘he or she’.
· It stays with the traditional Hebrew text (like the New Jewish Publication Society Version) rather than emending it. When I was making the translation I thus started from that traditional text itself, but I did refer to some existent translations, and sometimes adopted expressions from them. These other translations also occasionally made me see where I had slipped up, by missing out some words or misreading a word, just like an ancient scribe. I noticed, too, that sometimes they had slipped up in similar ways. I expect I have not eliminated all my mistakes, and you are welcome to let me know at where you notice one. At johngoldingay.com, under OT Introduction—OT for Everyone, I will post any corrections that come to my notice and any other comments I think of regarding my reason for translating particular verses the way I have.
· It uses everyday English in the sense that it often employs abbreviations such as ‘I’ll’ and ‘we’ll’ for ‘I will and ‘we will’. In addition, for some common Hebrew words it generally avoids traditional English translations such as salvation, holiness, eternity, covenant, justice, and righteousness, where these translations don’t correspond well to the the Hebrew words and/or where the English words are misleading when used to translate Hebrew words that have different connotations.
· In the poetic sections, I’ve laid out the lines so that they correspond to the way I think the poetry works. Poetic lines commonly comprise two parts (sometimes three) that link with each other to form a complete sentence. In the translation, the second part (and the third, if there is one) appears indented as a second (or third) line.
· It tries to use the same English word to translate any one Hebrew word, so that one can see points of connection between texts. Translations of Exodus commonly use the words slavery, bondage, servant, and worship to render forms of the same Hebrew word, and part of the point of the story depends on our being able to see the links beteen the occurrences of this word. So in this example I try to use ‘serve’ and related words for all occurences of the related Hebrew words. This principle is also different from the one taken by modern translations that focus on the meaning of words in individual sentences.
· It uses the name for God that God invited Israel to use, the name Yahweh, rather than replacing it by the expressions ‘the LORD’ or ‘GOD’. ‘Yahweh’ is the name God gave Moses to share with the Israelites. It’s God’s personal name. For many centuries within Old Testament times Israelites thus used this name, and it comes very frequently in the Old Testament. But late on in Old Testament times, people were less inclined to use the name, perhaps for two reasons. On one hand, if it’s important not to take Yahweh’s name in vain, it might be safer not to take it at all. On the other, using this name could give the impression that Israel’s God was just a little local god, whereas in reality he’s the creator and lord of the whole world. So Jews started replacing the name Yahweh by the word for ‘Lord’ or ‘God’, and they added marks to the text of the Scriptures to remind people to read out one of those other words in place of the name. When the Bible got translated into other languages, the name was then replaced by the equivalents of those words. The snag is that the alteration often spoils the sense of passages. So I have accepted Yahweh’s invitation to call him by his personal name. (People sometimes ask me whether this practice is offensive to Jews. The general answer is that they are not offended by other people using the name. As with prescriptions in the Torah, not to do so is simply their vocation or discipline.)
· It translates some other names rather than just translating them, or it provides an equivalent English expression for them. English forenames and place names such as Hope or Grace or Wells or Orange County are ordinary words as well as names, and English-speakers are sometimes aware of the resonance about such a name. Other names such as John and Sheffield also have ordinary words behind them, but English-speakers are less likely to be aware of these. Something similar applies to Hebrew names. So I occasionally translate such names when it seems likely that an Israelite would have been aware of their meaning (e.g., ‘The Height’ for the place transliterated as Ramah, which has ‘the’ on the front of it in Hebrew). In some other cases I provide the English meaning of the name in square brackets after the name, especially where the context implies an awareness of the name’s meaning (e.g., Adam means ‘human being’).
· Another consequence of the translation of the Old Testament into Greek, then of the Greek into Latin, then of the Latin into English, was that Mosheh became Moses, Yesha’yahu became Isaiah, Yerushalaim became Jerusalem, and so on (and Yohanan became John). With familiar names such as those, I leave them in their traditional English form, but I sometimes add the original form in square brackets. I’ve been a tighter in transliterating less familiar names, without giving in to the temptation to be very technical. So the traditional Jehoiachin becomesYehoyakin. In less obvious instances I’ve given the traditional English forms in square brackets and/or listed equivalents in the Glossary, and I’ve used the traditional English versions of the names in the section headings. By using more precise transliterations I hope also to make it a bit easier to work out the pronunciation of names (e.g., ‘Jehoiachin’ gives the misleading impression that the name includes a ‘ch’ sound as well as a ‘j’ sound, neither of which is true). I have represented Hebrew letters as follows:
zayin becomes z (rather than s)
kaph becomes k (rather than ch)
qoph becomes q (rather than k)
tsade becomes ts (rather than z)
he and het both become h (sorry not to distinguish these)
sameq and sin both become s (sorry not to distinguish these)
when aleph or ayin comes in the middle of names, both become ’ (sorry not to distinguish these), like an apostrophe in English, so as to help with pronouncing them. But when they come at the beginning or end of names, I ignore them.
The Old Testament for Everyone series and this translation were the brainchild of Philip Law, with whom I’ve worked both at SPCK and at Westminster John Knox. I’m grateful to him for our longstanding and relaxed partnership; as I am to my agent Pieter Kwant, whom I ask for advice about possible projects, and whose enthusiasm for the Old Testament for Everyone commentary series was important to my agreeing to embark on that undertaking.
I’ve tried to work out how long the translation took, and the nearest I have to an answer is, an hour or two a day for about five years, plus the revision time which took me the best part of a year. The commentary took another hour or two a day for about five years.
Introduction
‘The Old Testament’ is the usual Christian name for the collection of Scriptures dating from before the time of Jesus that Jews and Christians have in common. The actual title ‘The Old Testament’ comes from two or three centuries after Jesus and links with the fact that by then the church had acquired some further Scriptures which it came to call ‘The New Testament’. As well as pairing the Old Testament Scriptures with the New Testament Scriptures, Christian Bibles have the Old Testament Scriptures in a different order, and that order is the one The Old Testament for Everyone follows.
In this order, the Old Testament unfolds as follows.
1. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
The ‘Pentateuch’ or the ‘Torah’, traditionally ‘The Five Books of Moses’, telling the story of the world’s beginnings and of the beginnings of Israel
2. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings
The continuation of Genesis to Deuteronomy, relating Israel’s story from its arrival in Canaan to the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians
3. Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther
A retelling of the entire story in Genesis to Kings followed by a continuation that relates the restoration of Jerusalem, and by a story about Jewish experience in Persia itself
4. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs
Books that are nearly all poetry and that relate more directly to everyday life, worship, and prayer, sometimes in confident affirmations, sometimes in questions
5. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Twelve Shorter Prophets
Mostly collections of short messages that challenge and encourage Israel about its present life and circumstances and about the future that lies ahead of it
What Was the Old Testament For?
Why is the Old Testament this kind of collection of works? What were they supposed to do for the Israelites for whom they were written and for the Jewish community that first came to recognize them as their Scriptures? And what are they supposed to do for the Christian church?
Their very nature suggests what they were designed to be for Israel and for the Jewish people. First they tell them the beginning of their story, and they thus help them understand who they are. Then they continue that story into subsequent centuries, which adds to this effect. They collect the expectations regarding their lives that God enabled them to formulate over the centuries, which are also therefore expected to shape their life on an ongoing basis. They speak in the present about how life works, how praise and prayer are designed to be, and how to wrestle with some of life’s key problems. And they record some of God’s nightmares and dreams about the people’s future.
When some Jews came to believe in Jesus and to see his coming as the climax of Israel’s own story, they naturally used these resources to help them understand Jesus. The ‘New Testament’ did not regard the ‘Old Testament’ as ‘old’ in the sense of antiquated or out-of-date; to make that point, I sometimes like to refer to it as the First Testament rather than the Old Testament. For Jesus and the New Testament writers, these Scriptures were a living resource for understanding God, God’s ways in the world, and God’s ways with us. Every part of them was ‘useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person who belongs to God can be proficient, equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3:16-17). They were for everyone, in fact. So it’s strange that Christians don’t read them very much.